Can we count this as Star Trek’s first three-parter? It’s like the third part of the foundation that makes the most celebrated parts of the Star Trek franchise going forward. I rail against the continuity, but it’s clearly one of the parts of Trek that people look forward to.

They call up Wil Wheaton to do an acting exercise, Picard is cool as heck, and we learn that Worf apparently shares parents with Mike Warner. It’s a good ‘un.

“Captain Riker, Ambassador Picard”: Good idea or bad idea?

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CT.

We talk about the character work, Riker’s command decisions, and maneuver naming conditions. Some of that is really good and some of it is disappointing.

I don’t question it because it smooths the rough edges of the narrative, but Derek has a point about making Worf Riker’s executive officer instead of Shelby. Shelby’s great and all, but if something happened to Riker, you’d want someone who knows the crew.

Also, we get the Borg queen presaged. I mean, insect queens don’t really issue commands as much as they act as a unique and hard-to-replace part of the colony’s biomachinery, but the point is a salient one. Is there a better, accessible analogy for the Borg than colonial insects?

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CT.

When you have a character who is a badass killing machine, you want to set up a scenario when they’re allowed to go all-out. Maybe not on the cogs in the wheel of an unjust system. The cogs Kovachs just gunned down in the corridors.

What’s interesting about media is that characters are rarely called upon to make the banal moral compromises most of us have to to pay rent. So when our dude starts killing every minimum wage worker and middle-manager trying to get by in a world run by disengaged Methuselahs it takes me a minute to realize we’re supposed to be rooting for him. Ew.

I’m also angry he only uses his gun’s retractable bullet thing once in this whole series. Like…what’s the point, man?

You may be excited to learn that this is the last Blood and Chrome to get pushed to the feed. The other six episodes will be linked on VanVelding.com as I edit them and next week we will resume Star Trek: The Next Generation with “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II.”

The Beige and The Bold is available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcasting platforms. It updates Sunday nights at 12:00 PM ET / 11:00 PM CST. Season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation begins October 21st.

(Most) Every Wednesday, I make a brief development blog on my card/board game, Dead Parents Dungeon (DPD). It’s a fantasy-themed, light-hearted game about families and dungeons.

Progress: Second Rules Draft

The TurnEach turn has two phases: the Village Phase–where families search for rumors, raise their children, and plan for retirement–and the Dungeon Phase—where adventurers look for rumored dungeons and fight the monsters inside.

Babies.The first part of every turn is creating babies. Adventurers with a free space in a lower generation of their family draw one baby card from the baby deck and put it into a free space below them. Free spaces that are in a higher generation are filled before free spaces in a lower generation.Then, players take actions, starting with the first player. During each player’s turn, they may take one of four actions. Some cards may create additional actions late.

Actions.Train – A player may play an Adventurer card from their hand onto a baby in their family. That adventurer keeps the baby card—and its die—underneath the Adventurer card.You cannot train a baby if there is an untrained baby in a higher generation in your family.

Retire – The player plays a retirement card and chooses an Adventurer from their oldest generation. They then remove the retirement card’s cost from their family’s hoard and place them into the monster discard pile.The chosen Adventurer transfers all of their baby cards to Adventurers of the next-younger generation in any way they see fit.This retiring Adventurer is placed on the retirement card, and the family tree shifts, just as if that character had died.Then, check for victory. If a player’s total points from all Retirement cards is greater than or equal to 10, they win the game.

Rumors – The player plays a Rumor card. Then all players bid monsters for the right to send their adventurers into the dungeon. Then, for each winning bid, each player marks one of their adventure as going into the dungeon. Those Adventurers cannot interact with any other Village Actions this turn and are not affected by any Village Actions.If a player has played a Rumor card, after the Village Phase there will be a Dungeon Phase. Only one Rumor card can be played per turn. If there are 6 or more players, a second Rumor card can be played, but an Adventurer can only enter one Dungeon per turn.

Go into The Village – Take a card from the Village and replace it with the top card of the Village Deck or draw 2 cards from the village.

Last Card Type: NPCs. NPCs give abilities while in the Village and can be removed with an action, often times, to be replaced with a card from a player’s hand.